Flaps are also a big safety benefit in outlandings? Std Class ships come
in comparatively much hotter?

Really? 44 contests flying a Discus and not a scratch. 5 retrieves with
tail booms broken....all flap ships. So, I say lousy pilots fly flap ships.
Or, flap ship pilots make poor decisions. Find the ship you want to race.
It will take hours and hours to become tuned with her so you might as well
love the ride.

Heh. We're definitely approaching northern hemisphere winter.

My own "outlandings gone bad" observational experience is roughly 50%...and
very few of the pilots involved approached their field selection choices in as
cowardly as fashion as Yours Truly. That said, "the best of my tales" involved
a PIK-20B (90-degree flaps) driver seriously breaking his bird in an OFL to a
smallish field...downwind. It was "your classic lowish-experienced-OFL sort of
high/fast/in-too-close pattern, even without the tailwind assist. I've little
doubt that almost anything beyond an on-airspeed-1-26 would've been seriously
broken trying to make a downwind approach to that particular field.

Flaps or not, there ain't no substitute for good judgment!

Bob W.

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